The primary purpose of the Huddly trip to CES was to participate in the Extreme Tech Challenge 2017 event. We were proud and humbled to represent not only Huddly, but the entire Nordic region! You see, in October 2016 we WON the Nordic Extreme Tech Challenge during Oslo Innovation Week. As the winner of the Nordic vertical competition, we were invited to speak at the semifinal event in Las Vegas. We also got to participate in all of the other XTC events over the three day event. We met a ton of people, got to spread the Huddly vision and had an awesome experience. It was EXTREME!

Speaking of EXTREME, you have to check out the genesis of the XTC organization. Combine technical entrepreneurs, extreme kiteboarding and elite venture people then mix it all together and you have a truly magical event.

Does that mean we have to start kiteboarding? Check out this picture of Bill Tai (co-founder of XTC) taking to the air. These guys work hard and play hard. Sounds familiar.

Thanks to XTC for inviting us! Thanks to the Oslo Business Region for everything you do for the startup community. Special thanks to the Huddly tribe. Our employees rock. Our customers are awesome. Our investors are true believers.

If you're not part of the Huddly tribe, then we welcome you with open arms. Join in the conversation here AND don't forget to pre-order a couple of Huddly GO's for your team.

How to Give a Two Minute Presentation at CES

I've previously written about public speaking on my LinkedIn account. First on perspective and also about when things go wrong. Most people are terrified of talking in front of people. A very few make it look effortless. Mark Twain said, "There are two kinds of speakers: those that are nervous and those that are liars." . I believe that you need to be authentic. Having both given my fair share of talks and receiving a far, far greater number, I can confidently say that most of the presentations I've sat through are terrible. I believe that you can be over prepared for a talk and when it comes out super scripted, then it just sounds wrong. I typically try to bridge between three points I want the audience to remember. Rehearsed, yes. Scripted, no.

Here's how we approached our presentation at the Extreme Tech Challenge.

Who's the audience? What's the venue look like? How many people? Slides or no slides? How much time do we get? Is there a Q&A session? What is the message we want to leave with the audience that both gives them value AND might lead them to take action?

A little research into the past XTC events at CES revealed some answers. The people are high profile. One of the judges this year was the president and CEO of the Consumer Technology Association, Gary Shapiro. The audience was filled with movers and shakers. The venue was a Las Vegas sized medium ballroom (big by normal standards) that held hundreds of people. No spare seats, packed in the aisles, spilling into the hallway type of event. Yes on slides. Five minute speaking slot. Maybe Q&A. OK ... we were set on the people and the venue.

We also had a pretty good idea on the Huddly message and the tone. So we put together 6 slides, the speaker bio/photo package and started to think about the words.

5 minutes. That's not a ton of time, but plenty. Often you are asked to fill 15 minutes, or 30 minutes. Sometimes even an hour ... but that's when the organizers are lazy or desperate. The 18 minute TED talk format is the most effective in my opinion. Nobody needs to hear an hour of me (or anybody else) droning on. Sorry for those that have had to suffer through it in the past!

A quick side note. It is easier for me to present when I both control the timing AND when the audience is larger. It may seem a little counter intuitive, but the larger audiences are easier. A stage, mics, mixers, big screen and lots of people that you can't even really see ... piece of cake. Two wildcards. High profile audience and the 5 minute target. Here's a hint that the 5 minute part was about to get a lot more challenging. What's name of this section? Yep. How to give a two minute presentation at CES! We'll get to that in a minute.

Back to the preparation. I wanted to start off by introducing Huddly and my role. I wanted to start by saying that we are world renown camera experts and we will be known as experts in vision processing. I wanted to thank several people, including Jørn and Fredrick at the Oslo Business Region. I wanted to thank our customers, our investors, Bill Tai and the entire XTC team, the judges that selected Huddly as the winner of the Nordics XTC event over 80+ other companies. There are so many people that help you get from where you start to where you are. Be thankful. I also wanted to set the tone that we were well funded through 2017 to separate ourselves from the seed funded guys.

We build things that see. We have big audacious plans at Huddly. However, if there was one thing that I wanted the audience to remember, then it was Huddly builds things that see. We are builders of products. And the word "see" is not restricted to "with our eyes". I used 4 words to augment "see": perception, recognition, understanding and cognition. How do you remember these 4 words when they're not on the slides? For one, you shouldn't be reading from slides so no reason to put them there. And two, the slides should be pretty much free of words anyway. So how do you remember the 4 words? Close your eyes and give it a shot. Here's my secret and it comes from the simplest of concepts in the book, Moonwalking with Einstein, The Art and Science of Remembering Everything. Create a memory palace that you can walk through. What the heck does this mean? Well here's what I did while sitting next to a casino bar between meetings at CES. I saw on TV a commercial with a fake doctor on the screen. I thought: Perception is reality. I moved my gaze to the right and saw a guy talking on his cell phone. I thought: I Recognize him. I looked over to the area where I just had the previous meeting. I remembered him nodding his head in Understanding. Finally, I thought about keeping all of these thoughts in my own mind. Cognition. And there you have it. I can walk through this memory palace for the next few weeks. The problem is how to forget it. Give it a try.

All journeys start with a first step and I next wanted to paint the picture of our first product that will soon be shipping, Huddly GO. A powerful, high quality, great industrial design camera, but also a programable platform that was different than any other camera available. A nod to the simplest of use cases to see a wider view of the room when doing your next standup meeting. The camera has an insane field of view with really well balanced distortion correction.

But that's not why I joined Huddly. There's more than meets the eye and I wanted to let that sink in as we utilize this powerful, programmable platform to explore some really interesting use cases in spaces where we collaborate.

I finally wanted to drive home 3 things that we need to do at Huddly in 2017 and beyond. One is product. We have high confidence in great product market fit already. Two is customers. We have been operating a pre-launch beta program for the past several months and we have learned a lot! The type of customers is critical too. We need and have many unaffiliated customers which indicates the ability to scale. Finally we want to build a world class team and we are well underway on that endeavor. We've more than doubled in the past year and we have a truly world team spanning 6 different time zones. I am so proud to work alongside every member of our team.

Reinforce the message that we build things that see, wrap up the 5 minute talk and exit triumphantly stage left with arms raised in the victory salute.

That was the plan at least.

When the Plan Meets Reality ... BOOM.

We had dinner with the XTC guys. We saw the competitor demos. We had gone through a practice session (came in at over 6 minutes ... need to trim it down). We walked the room. All good. I then found Sabine and asked if our slides were in the main deck. They weren't. I then confirmed the 5 minutes. No ... you have 2 minutes! Just say YES!

Keynote slides to Gigi. Eliminate some of the thank you part of the talk and off we went.

The key word there is eliminate. That is useful in most things we do. Eliminate, simplify, focus. It all works out. I was able to make almost all of the points and exited triumphantly stage left. We not only survived, but thrived.

We had a great time in Vegas. I wish we were going to Necker Island because I would've liked to play tennis with Sir Richard Branson!

First of all, I know that not everybody is a fan of cats ... but our family is into pets of all types, shapes and sizes including cats ... and we recently added Miley and Piper to the family a few weeks ago. If you are a cat hater, then hit the exit now button. But look at the picture, you have to admit they are more than a little cute!

Second, how do you remotely spin a post about kittens into a parable about work? Not sure on this one, but I'll try to make that connection at the end.

My wife and I have had various pets the entire time we've been married (almost 33 years). The only pet less period being the last 4 months after the tragic death of my wife's beloved companion, Bandit. I'm not going to go into the details, but suffice to say that even at 15 years old, it was not his time to go. Lonna will always miss her little boy.

Enter Miley and Piper. They are adorable. And wild. And 16 weeks old. One of them is a little chunky.

They are Scottish Fold kitties (no hating ... we normally do rescue). From the picture you can see one is straight eared and one is folded. The claim to fame in their young existence is that they've already been filmed for an upcoming Taylor Swift documentary. Actually two separate video shootings. It was fun for all. You see Taylor also has a pair of Folds and apparently is quite attached to them. Taylor, if you're reading this (and certainly you are), then hook us up with a couple tickets to your upcoming show at the Circuit of Americas F1 weekend. Thanks!

All of our pets have brought joy to our family and I know that many of our friends can relate.

As to the work angle, here are a couple things to think about:

Naming conventions. Engineers are fanatical about project names. BTW, you should let the engineering teams own naming. I do remember a series of projects were named after professional golf courses. Most engineers don't play golf and didn't connect with the names, duh. Big cat names were popular with Apple before they switched to California natural resources. You remember Cheetah, Jaguar, Panther, Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard, Lion and Mountain Lion. Somebody at Apple likes cats! Our pet names have included Carly, Zinger, Sunny, Pixel, Ziggy, Bandit, Shadow, Sarah and Yogi. The current kittens are named Miley (after Miley Cyrus ... cute but bad) and Piper (after Piper airplanes). We also had the most awesome fish ever, Warren (named after Warren Buffett). Personally I'm partial to classic warbirds like Mustang, Lightning, Corsair, YF12, Bearcat, ... for project names.

Pets vs Cattle. I've written about this before, but surely you name your servers after cattle and not pets. It is 2016 after all. But, back in the day ... we affectionately would bring our pets into the server room. Go ask your dad! Here's another link.

Last week at Infocomm, I went to the keynote by the Freakonomics guy, Stephen J. Dubner. I thought it was an awesome presentation and the big theme was around collecting good data and incentivizing your staff. He gave some bizarre, but memorable examples that included hand sanitation, turkey sex and the use of currency by monkeys. The young guys sitting behind me didn't get it. Infocomm is a great venue for education and these guys were taking the CTS exam. After the keynote, they said ... "It was good, but what did that have to do with anything?". It did, but you have to figure out how it applies to your own story. Storytelling is powerful. Our cats (and pets) are the source for many stories in our life. You can piece together Dubner's message with these links:

It's not CES! A great showing for sure (>38,000 attendees), but it's a show in miniature compared to CES (>170,000). Easy to get around, easy to eat, easy to meet, easy in and out. Did I say it was HOT? Jeez it was HOT! January is a better time to visit Vegas.

I have no dog in the hunt at the moment, so I'm in a unique position to tell it like I see it. I'm not getting paid, I'm not reviewing any products at a vendors request, I have no axe to grind. In the spirit from one of my favorite trusted advisor sites, the Wirecutter, I'll end with what I would use for myself from the products that were shown by video conferencing vendors in the North Hall. In the spirit of full disclosure, I did get a free t-shirt from Logitech without doing the scavenger hunt. Thanks Robin!

People

I ran into more than three dozen old friends and ex-colleagues. That was an unexpected surprise. Met a dozen new people too. Three of the new acquaintances were of particular interest. It was serendipity really as I had a pre-booked meeting at the Mandarin Oriental (the SkyBar on the 23rd floor is ... SWEET!) with one of them. Turns out he was the chairman of an interesting company that I had seen on the show floor early in the day. Met the CEO and CTO the next morning before I hoped on a plane. Thanks guys for making the extra effort to meet up at my hotel lobby early in the morning! And that's all I've got to say about that until my non-compete ends in September.

Landscape

Honestly, I didn't see a lot of new things that I would classify as earth shattering (other than consolidation, both real and imagined). Zoom still appears to be crushing it. Cisco is impressive to stay so big for so long and continue to dominate the top end of the market. Logitech is grinding it out as an arms merchant to the various services. Despite Microsoft being absent, everybody was representing around Skype for Business. I suppose MS gets a free pass since they were likely busy putting ~$27B of large bills in suitcases for LinkedIn. Everyday that goes by seems to get harder for Blue Jeans as it seems time is passing them by and a bunch of credible competitors in market. Starleaf consistently shows up as they have for the last 7 years or so and their new UC OpenCloud initiative looks interesting. The Polycom booth was packed which surprised me. I guess waiting to see if they put on the Mitel cap or Siris Capital cap. I did like the Trio product. Centro, not so much. Videxio, Pexip, Grandstream, YeaLink and too many more to name ... yawn. Lifesize was self-banished to the far outskirts of the Central Hall in a corner of the Synex booth (WTF?). Almost as far away from the other video conferencing players as possible. And there was that one other little company that will remain nameless for now.

Four Quick Stories & Lessons from the Show

On the outbound plane, I talked to a guy who had his IT guy a few seats back. We talked about VC and a project about to start at the University of Texas. The trusted advisor (a small, local, unknown AV reseller) knows about Cisco and no one else. He asked if I was interested in doing some consulting. I said no. Lesson learned: the gatekeepers in this industry are alive and well.

Next, I met a woman heading up IT for a $1B Austin based public company. They use a variety of collaboration gear and looking for validation of the current systems as well as what is new. First and foremost criteria was job preservation ... for her. Lesson learned: survival instincts are still strong in the jungle.

Next, I ran into a high ranking representative of an industry trade group sitting next to me at breakfast. We knew each other from years ago. They were familiar with the Lifesize of old and their opinions were stuck back in the era of HD endpoints. Despite my comments to the contrary, they were sure that Lifesize was dead. Perception is reality. Lesson learned: maybe these trade shows have some value after all. Keep showing up.

Lastly, I overheard a conversation at the Acano section of the Cisco booth. JNJ was there and they were giddy over the prospect of expanding their Cisco deployment. Lesson learned: on premise is far from dead and for companies like JNJ there are only two options ... Cisco or Microsoft.

My Recommendation

From the list of vendors showing their wares in the North Hall at Infocomm 2016 ... I would personally deploy ... drumroll please ...

Looking back, the influence that Apple had on my formative years was broad.

A comment on style. Presentation style. Having watched several keynotes over the last couple weeks, I think that the Apple style keynote is long overdue for a complete overhaul. Most have gotten pretty good at copying the script. Even I used it in my presentations to an ad nauseum level. The last several (dozens) of Apple keynotes follow it. It is predictable to the point of getting boring. I hope that next week is different, but doubt it. Watching the unscripted 1997 Jobs Q&A session was refreshing.

A few highlights (with some editorial comments in brackets:

Focusing is about saying no. (and that pisses off people)

You're always changing, but people continue to treat you like the person you were 18 months ago. It's very frustrating. Same with a company. [I have an upcoming post called Don't Put Baby in a Corner.]

Turn out great products. Communicate directly with customers as best you can.

Apple's had it's head in the sand for many years ...

... which led to his thoughts on simple network computing, modern open standards, knowing what the 10% - 30% that really makes you better, windows into communication tasks, cloud computing, vertical integration, 18 developers -> 5 world class apps, apps, tools, marketing and journalism influence,

There's a lot of smart people that don't work at Apple too.

It has to be a whole lot better (than others)

We were too stupid to know we didn't have a chance ... and that served us well!

Every good product that I've ever seen is because a group of people cared deeply about making something wonderful that they and their friends wanted.

It is dumb to think that for you (Apple) to win, your competitor (Microsoft) has to lose

Productivity increases by eliminating the lines of code a programmer needs to write

I don't buy that at all. I don't think that's true. [Brutal honesty.]

Ouch ... at 50:20 into the chat, it got contentious when the questioner asks Steve, "... and when you're finished with that, can you tell us what you've personally been doing for the last 7 years." [HIs answer was measured, tolerant and compelling. A window into his maturing public persona. Props. If you only have 5 minutes to watch, then watch these 5 minutes (every year!). For additional analysis of this segment, check this out.]

Get to a point where you can sell $10B of product per year. [Funny when you look back at how this all turned out.]

You've got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology. You can't start with the technology and figure out where you're gonna try and sell it. Instead, what incredible benefits can we give to the customer ... NOT let's sit down with the engineers and figure out what awesome technology we can use.

He hedged on intelligent computing saying there was such a big opportunity on connected network devices. [He was 20 years right. Only recently have the big guns turned toward AI and ML. It's fair to ask if yet another messaging platform (no matter it's intelligence) is really what a customer is asking for.]

He didn't believe that a company could manage three different product + software stacks simultaneously (MacOS, OSX, Newton). I don't want a little scribble thing. High order bit is connectivity [which means that Newton died (or was murdered).]

I originally wrote the words below early last week, but instead of posting it, I wrote a different one & posted, What About OpenDoc? It's Dead, Right?. Here's the first one. I'll post thoughts on Infocomm 2016 tomorrow.

On my way to Infocomm to see what interesting things await there, but wanted to get a quick post up first.

I certainly believe you should be good at what you do and continue to get better, but there is tremendous value in just showing up day after day to practice your craft.

For example, take these weekly LinkedIn posts. When I started the gap year, I committed to doing a weekly writeup for the entire year. This is the 39th one. Most are rubbish, but occasionally the squirrel finds the nut and it turns out OK.

I got a call yesterday from a guy that is interested in buying the airplane I built in the 90's. I'm certainly conflicted about parting with N197LC, but I'm reminded of the secret I used to successfully complete the project. I showed up everyday and did something. If I only went out to clean up, I invariably wound up building a little piece that then became a bigger piece that turned into an airplane. Eat the elephant one bite at a time they say. Yes, the picture in this post is my airplane with me at the helm above the skies in Kansas.

Last weekend, my nephew turned me back on to Casey Neistat. His latest project (that has been running for the last 18 months) is to do a daily 10 minute video blog (vlog). I've edited my share of video and know that to do something I'm proud of takes hours. The commitment to posting something/anything on a daily basis is admirable. The payoff for him is that he typically gets 1 million views per day and is a rising YouTube celebrity. A million views per day ... that's ridiculous! I used to feel good about averaging ~400 views per post here.

I'm taking 4 online courses at the moment. The problem is that I'm NOT showing up everyday and it shows. Just too many distractions I guess. No shame, no blame. I'll get back on it when I get back from Vegas. The beauty (or curse) of not being on a deadline. I believe in Parkinson's law.

Neistat's vlogs are inspiring me to give that a shot next. I'm thinking extremely short form, every day for a week or maybe a month.

Who the hell is Laurence Kotlikoff you ask? I'l get to him in a minute.

First, Mary Meeker's annual State of the Internet address happens this week at Re/Code's Code Conference. I can't wait to see the ~200 page slide deck. It's an annual gem that I rank up there with the Berkshire Hathaway annual letter, the video archives of Steve Jobs presentations, the mother of all demos by Doug Englebart and many others. If you have a must read/watch paper, book or presentation then please post in the comments.

Meeker's Internet Trends gem is best consumed annually so you can really see the trends year over year (much like annual pilgrimages to the Consumer Electronic Show). As I mentioned in my answer to this question, “If I gave you $40,000 to start a business, what would you start?”, I would start with Mary Meeker's research on product/market trends. It's good. I'm looking forward to see updates around:

Tech impact on security, education, healthcare, financial & government over the last year. More.

Can daily usage of digital media go even higher from 5.6 hours per day per adult? Likely.

Will there be a change in top 10 mobile apps used? 6 of them are message apps. Doubtful.

Faceback and Twitter down again amongst young users? Probably for Twitter.

Social Security, Medicare and Medicate make up 74% of the entitlement number

Entitlements are biggest long term liabilities ($36 trillion and off the books of public debt held)

American healthcare cost larger than all other OCED countries combined

Only 49% of American households pay federal income tax

... AND 46% of American households receive some sort of government payment

Entitlement and interest expenses will exceed revenue by 2025

I'm reminded of the USA, Inc. paper and presentation while listening to the dribble of the current presidential front runners. Funny, but they don't seem to be addressing any of the big issues (BTW did you see last weeks SpaceX video? Talk about BHAG!). Is this really the best that we can do? No significant discussion of the fiscal gap, improving educational ranking, investment in infrastructure and R&D, fixing taxes, fixing entitlements, fixing healthcare, improving social issues and more.

$13 trillion in debt. Other obligations are off the books. Adding only social security brings total to $39 trillion.

We're told we owe $18 trillion, but the fiscal gap is really closer to $200 trillion. In either case, imagine if you ran your household finances this way. You would be dead broke.

Quote from the paper. "Our employers are not our friends, they are not our parents, and they are not our government. They should not be deciding what healthcare we receive, how much we can save on a tax-sheltered basis, how and with whom we invest our savings and, thanks to these decisions, what we pay in taxes."

I'll stop there because I think I have more than enough bulleted lists in this post. Check out the various links if you are interested in reading more. An exercise for those that are highly motivated. Assume that you have an income of $100,000. What would be your credit card debt if you operated at the same fiscal gap as the USA? And no ... you can't print more coin to pay it off.

I still remember the endless summers I had as a kid. Hanging with friends, camps, swimming, playing baseball, playing tennis, riding bikes (both pedals and motors), visiting grandparents, going to the library, movies, putt putt golf, .... a weeklong vacation with the family. A week? That's just wrong. OK, if you're lucky it was two weeks.

Somehow the endless summers slipped away. It was slow, but sure.

A couple recent stories. One was with a best buddy from my formative years. They are torn about whether to go to the mountains for a week this summer or to head for the beach. My initial question was, why not a week at both? Is is really impossible to make that happen? Second was a quick weekend trip (overnight) trip out of state. The reason for coming back so quickly was to get back to work. Really? Maybe just the easier answer. Next was somebody that I used to work with just took a new job. Two weeks of vacation a year .... WTF? At least there is a vacation policy and not this bullshit unofficial "take as much as you need" policy. You know ... the one that makes you feel guilty about every single day you take off. Letting down your teammates. When you leave the company, there is no accrued vacation to settle up. Good for them, bad for you. Ok, one last story. A friend has a son who was interning for the summer. He came home after the first week and said something to the effect, "I'm not sure about this 40 hour a week job, every week, every year for the rest of my life.". Ha, if only he had known it is nowhere near "only 40 hours" ;).

As graduation caps fly and we get bombarded with the annual commencement address videos offering a variety of life advice, I'd like to offer one more.

Take more than a 1 week summer vacation this year.

Time away from your day to day responsibilities is therapeutic and I guarantee that you will actually do some work along the way. If you ask my wife, she'll say I'm still working 8 months into the gap year! Sure, I take about 3-5 meetings a week, what's wrong with that? I'm taking 4 online classes too. But there is plenty of time for play too.

It all happened gradually enough. Full summers off. Then part time work during school and the summer. Then 10 week internships (hopefully paid). Maybe a semester of paid work thrown in there. Then a fulltime job. Promotions. Then you send your family on a extra trip without you because you just can't take the time. More promotions and responsibility. Can't take all the vacation you get and you are maxed out. It happens.

OK ... I'm not really going in person, but doesn't it count if I just watch the WWDC videos?

I really did go to a conference last week and you know what? it was pretty fun! I'm going to another one in three weeks (Viva Las Vegas Baby!). Look me up if you're there.

You must be asking ... WHY?

Last week I was invited to the GalaxZ16 (a customer community focused conference by local company Zenoss). The venue was right across the street from where we live in Austin. So I woke up early (for me) and walked across the street to catch the CEO talk and two keynotes. They were all pretty good. I especially liked Brian Kelly (Chief Security Officer at Rackspace). There is a lot of change in the IT space, especially as the proliferation of all things with IP addresses explodes (IoT). Fixed perimeters just won't cut it anymore. Security is misunderstood by most and Kelly (with the help of dozens of others) has published a free ebook that describes the problem (& solutions) in a high level format geared toward C-level executives and Board of Directors. It's worth a look and you can get it here.

A few of the notes I wrote down included:

5 million events recorded at customer. Only 28 deemed important to monitor. (Zenoss is a monitoring company)

I liked the keynotes so much that I returned for a couple sessions in the afternoon and then met up with an old friend for happy hour. Learned a few new things, met a few new people, met some old friends and I have a new book to read. All in a space where I can learn more. Inspiration comes from the intersection of different spaces (and people) in new ways. I came away with a few things to think about.

In three weeks I'll make a brief appearance at Infocomm. This one will be more in the wheelhouse of what I've done for the past decade. I'll certainly see old friends. Will I see anything new? I'm optimistic, but I haven't heard about anything groundbreaking yet. But as I consider the next act, I need to see if there is something there. The gap year is over in 4 months so the search needs to start now to see what's next. Remember it's "Hell Yeah, or No". In the spirit of "Hell Yeah", I've told my wife to go ahead and book out 2017 as a hedge. I know she'll do an awesome job!

Conferences. They are one way to start to find the next thing. Fortunately you can access a lot of conference content through streaming, but you miss the human touch. That's missing a lot.

There are some wickedly weird conferences out there. A couple of my favs are SxSWi, WDS, PopTech, Entrepreneurs’ Un-Convention ... and of course my small conference in Breckenridge, CO this summer (email me if interested).

Maybe I've been reading too much science fiction lately, but the next couple of decades will be dominated by AR/VR like devices and experiences. There is no doubt in my mind. Certainly, the highway will be littered with road kill to get there, but get there we will. Machine learning is integral to this future and an area that I'm keenly interested in.

I was originally going to tee this up with an example of magic metrics and data analysis to determine what your magic metric is and how to use data analysis (and machine learning) to identify (and address) customer churn. A post for later.

But then I read the Wall Street Journal this morning about the exit of Lending Club's founder and CEO, Renaud Laplanche.

In a world where every executive team says that they are data driven, then you have to ask yourself a question. If that is true, then can you automate the tactical leadership decisions through machine learning?

The CEO is certainly critical for many things, like vision, fundraising, culture (including cheerleading) and team building, but is the value overblown? Was Renaud really worth total annual compensation that exceeded $11 million? Or could he have been replaced by a machine learning algorithm? Think about it.

Agile has merits in some parts of product development. It has some serious flaws as well IMO. Two things that strike me as true with Agile are:

Inspect and Adapt attitude

Executive team members are not product owners (this is a strict and often violated tenet)

We're disrupting all sorts of things with machine learning (search, computer vision, robotics, Wealthfront, Betterment, HealthKit, CareKit, ...). If the executive team members aren't product owners, then can what they do be both improved and cost reduced? Is it time to disrupt the basic organization of the company?

An internal review of Lending Club found multiple instances of loans being made to an investor(s) in violation of company policies. The lack of full disclosure was unacceptable to the board. Renaud was fired. This example surely doesn't need machine learning. But, machine learning could be critical to more complex situations. What if you could instantly and correctly analyze an infinite number of variables as they pertain to the operation of your business? Automatically? Without leadership intervention?

Imagine the interactions that you have today with company leadership. How much of it might be a candidate for using machine learning? Will this reverse the widening pay gap between the top and the bottom?

In any case, expect more thoughts about machine learning here over the next few months.

Also, I can't say enough about how entertaining Season Three of HBO's Silicon Valley is! Action Jack could certainly be improved with machine learning. But thank you for his invention of the Conjoined Triangles of Success!

I skied 15 days this year. Yes I missed my goal of 50 days, but I obviously didn't account for the 6 week trip in the Airstream we were taking through the desert. I also didn't get any snowboarding in. There's always next year and I've already secured next season's Epic Pass.

I hardly ever fall anymore. A combination of mad skiing skills and staying on terrain I know I can handle. But this season I had a full yard sale tumble down a run at Breckenridge. I'm talking end over end for a hundred yards or so.

Luckily I had invested in some new top tier ski gear this year.

The jacket detected that something was wrong as my torso went beyond the acceptable upright position. It knew something bad was going to happen before I did. With a combination of sensors embedded in the jacket, it detected and then inflated a protective vest inside the jacket. It wasn't anything like the Michelin Man, but more like the thickness of a Therma-Rest sleeping pad. Maybe one half an inch around. Enough to cushion the blow just a tad. I'm sure it saved my back!

The pants have this tricked out bio-mechanical thingy that detects when the articulation of the knee is out of normal. When that happens, the kevlar reinforced fabric actually morphs into what feels like an incredibly reinforced knee brace. I could actually feel it actuate as my body rotated upside down. I'm sure it saved my knee.

The boots are cool too. I normally ski with the buckles pretty loose. I love my boots, they are so comfortable. Here's the new feature. Rather than me having to bend over to adjust the straps, I just take out my iPhone, launch the Salomon app and dial in the level of the stiffness I want. The boot then automatically cinches down on my foot. Perfectly, every time. I still prefer to keep it loose, but for the occasional black diamond slope it's a nice to have feature.

The new Leki poles are tricked out too. They compact down to a size that fits in a sleeve of my pants so I don't have to deal with carrying them in addition to my skis. The baskets adjust too based on the dryness of the snow on powder days. There are audio controls on the grips that control my playlist on the phone AND when I double tap the grip with my hand there is a lanyard that automatically goes around my wrist.

Finally, the glass in the goggles change tint dynamically based on ski conditions. No more switching out the lenses .... or in my case, losing the lenses. Perfect for the near white out conditions when all the bumps disappear.

I had lunch with a friend today and we were talking about all the cool sensors that his company makes. I'm looking forward to the clothing that someday will augment my skiing ability.

The yard sale crash part was true ... and my back hurt for 3 weeks.

If you are interested in biomechatronics, then check out this TED talk by Hugh Herr. It's more than worth the 20 minute investment.

There are no shortages of futurists that are constantly penning best selling books on future trends. It sure does seem to me that we are finally on the cusp of a paradigm shift from the two dimensional display devices that we have been accustomed to using for the last several decades. It is no secret that I'm very excited about the possibilities of AR technology although we will see many, many years of failure before commercial success.

This post is not about AR, it's about FinTech.

The photo at the top of this post has over 50 names of FinTech companies taken from a segment on 60 Minutes this past weekend. The story highlighted Stripe, but it also called out several others that you've heard of. On the Nascar slide above, I recognize only 11 out of the 50+ companies. There are easily an order of magnitude more that are legitimate and financially backed. For instance, you've likely never heard of Honest Dollar, founded by a buddy here in Austin, that recently sold to Goldman Sachs. From concept to exit took 18 months. Impressive.

How many of these FinTech companies have you heard of or used?

Certainly you've used PayPal at one time or another. Have you used Venmo? Ask your kids. They use it all the time. I'm sure you've used Betterment and/or Wealthfront, right? Even if you don't choose to park your investment with them it is still fun to see the funds they would put you in based on your risk level. Got your own investments and want to track your net worth? Then surely you use Personal Capital. Have you experimented with LendingClub or Peerstreet? Why not? Selling kitty t-shirts online? Integrated with Stripe I guess.

I had the need to use Venmo for the first time this weekend and I got a quick text from my nephew who said, "Saw you used Venmo. Being young this weekend!".

Ouch.

Hey, just because I don't use it doesn't mean I can't or don't understand it. I used to be called a young whippersnapper, now I'm surrounded by them! I'm going to ask Daniel to explain BlockChain next time I see him!

There are many reasons to follow the future of FinTech as it explodes. Your company likely already integrates with some of these services, so it doesn't hurt to have a clue about what they are and how they work. On a personal note, you should be several months into saving that F-You money by now. Put some of these services to good use ... for your own benefit.

As for the futurist pundits, I'm looking forward to Kevin Kelly's new book that comes out in June. I'm also anxiously awaiting Mary Meeker's annual Internet Trends deck that I'm hoping comes out this month. Peak mobile? Maybe, but more like mobile stuck in mediocrity. But that's a post for another time.

The death of the unicorn has been widely predicted for the past year or so and no doubt it is time for the herd to be thinned. A healthy thing really and many will survive to continue the unique position of a true unicorn. Many will have a much harder time.

A quick story that I often think of as it relates to business ... from the soccer pitch.

My son was (and likely still is) a pretty good athlete. He played baseball for a couple years in college, but he was probably more skilled in soccer. As a left footer and quick, he gravitated to the back as a left back. It's one on one most of the time with the opponents speedy right forward. Those boys can really mix it up when they get to be D1 U16.

Another dad mentioned to me::

It is OK for the ball to go past the last defender (a long pass to no one).

It is OK for the man to go past the last defender (without the ball).

But it is NOT, NOT, NOT OK for the man to take himself and the ball past the last defender.

At work, I think of similar things as it relates to Growth and Profit.

It is OK to be growing quickly and lose some amount of money (the Unicorns have taken this to an unsustainable extreme though).

It is OK to be profitable and not grow as much

But it is not OK to be both shrinking and losing money. A recipe for disaster. Or certainly a case for some of the draconian measures that await some of the unicorns that all start with the word down (down size, down round, down the drain, ... ).

Even if encouraged, why would you give up control of your destiny? When uncertain times come, it sure helps if the business can reach a sustainable point without the need for outside capital.

Even more disturbing is the lack of deal transparency between the investors/managment and employees. You may think that the calculation of your expected returns would simply be the last round valuation multiplied by your percentage of the company. You would be wrong. There will always* be protection for the investors that you will not know about until a liquidation event. A great book on the inner workings of deals is by Brad Feld. Why isn't the cap table and term sheet available for all to see? It's as if there is a secret(s) being kept.

A last shout out to HBO's new season of Silicon Valley. I'm sure you have devoured seasons 1 and 2 like I have. Shocking that it has fans outside the tech space but so glad it keeps delivering.

Three months ago, I had an especially frustrating encounter with the Apple Genius. I wrote about it here. I was frustrated and asked why so many products are underwhelming, but also why is customer support so poor?

The iPad that was proclaimed dead on arrival (the Apple Genius said it was hardware rot and I said it was shoddy software) was remarkably brought back to life when I loaded the newest iOS release, version 9.3.1, over the weekend. I knew it was crappy software!

I'm confused. Should I be overjoyed or irritated? I'm going to choose overjoyed.

Now I face a dilemma. My newly resurrected iPad is four generations old! On one hand, I'm embarrassed to say that I have such an ancient piece of Apple hardware, but that's the problem with the iPad. Is there a compelling reason to upgrade?

Sure I'm drooling over that pencil thingy. The wide color gamut sounds great as a video guy who appreciates color. Surely I must need that new A9x processor, but I can't think of any applications that I have (or need) that require it. True tone display looks like a nice to have. I really would like to ditch all the 30 pin connectors around the house that are only used for this decrepit tablet.

But it still works great and that's the big problem with the iPad line. It is a problem that most device manufacturers have. How do you convince your customers to upgrade to new hardware platforms? You have to provide value worthy of the upgrade. Touch ID was magical on the iPhone 5s. Even so, I waited until my "every other" upgrade for the iPhone 6. I just can't seem to pull the trigger after 4 new iPad releases! That doesn't even include the iPad mini introductions.

Now I'm thinking they shouldn't have fixed it with a software upgrade.

I'm going to go back to the Apple Store today, find a Genius and they will certainly be able to set me straight. Point me toward some must have apps that only run on the iPad Pro. I already watched the new launch video and that didn't convince me.

What have you done for me lately? You can show me why I need a new iPad Pro.

For those serving customers (and that means everybody), make a positive impact today.

You may find it odd how I decide what to write about each week. I have an Evernote backlog of several dozen candidates, but usually I just pay attention to things happening around me. This post is one of those.

I bought & read Dan Lyon's book last week, Disrupted, about life at the dysfunctional company HubSpot. It was highly entertaining! I put HubSpot on my stock watch list. In the news section, the third article was 10 Strange Interview Questions You Should Prepare For. One of the questions was from a HubSpotter.

So here we go ... my answers to those questions. Put your answers in the comments. Come on ... it'll be fun!

10. “If you had $2,000, how would you double it in 24 hours?”—Uniqlo, Management Trainee

9. “How many basketballs would fit in this room?”—Delta Airlines, Revenue Management Co-op

I love these questions! Say the room is 10x10x10. A basketball is roughly 1 cubic foot in size, so that would be 1000 basketballs. Some compaction since they are round so add a few more if you want. One question to clarify is that the basketballs are actually inflated!

8. “If you were a brand, what would be your motto?”—Boston Consulting Group, Consultant

YOLO.

7. “What would you do if your found a penguin in the freezer?”—Trader Joe’s

First of all ... I LOVE PENGUINS! We were in New Zealand a decade ago and saw 3 different penguin varieties in the wild. The smallest were mated for life and the dude penguin would go off into the sea every morning and bring back food at night. The girl penguin would wait patiently at the shores edge for her guy to return. It was adorable! Back to the question ...

My first thought would be to keep the penguin, but my sanity would return and I'd try to place Tux (seriously ... is there another choice for a name??) in the local zoo so I could visit. Of course, I'd first take a ton of pics and post to social media, Quora, Stack Overflow and all the linux mailing lists!

For fun, we went to Ready, Paint, Fire yesterday and I painted up my own miniature penguin ceramic. "Tux" is now sitting inside our fridge in Breckenridge ;).

6. “If I gave you $40,000 to start a business, what would you start?”—Hubspot, Account Manager

I'd go quantity over quality. First, I'd re-read Mary Meeker's annual state of the internet deck for inspiration. Then I'd allocate $4000 to 10 different ideas for things that I couldn't do myself (like graphic design specialized consulting). I'd mock up a web front end and a rudimentary iOS app myself (I'd fake the backend with some dummy data). I'd build one of the ideas a week, then after 10 weeks I'd go through them all and eliminate 5 as total loser ideas. I'd then pitch the other 5 to my trusted friends and VC guys I know. Certainly one of them would be the next unicorn. As for specifics ... I'm going to keep them under wraps ... for 10 weeks!

OK, I admit it. I liked these questions so much that we spent the entire dinner with my son and his girlfriend going through them. On this question, I'm stealing my wife's answer. Sell frozen cocoa popsicles. I'd buy one.

4. “What would the name of your debut album be?”—Urban Outfitters, Sales Associate

Open Roads (the name of our first website). If a duet with my wife, then TrekWithTheKings (our current website).

3. “If you’re the CEO, what are the first three things you check about the business when you wake up?”—Dropbox, Rotation Program

Employees happy. Customer escalations. New sales. If a cloud business (and aren't they all??), then I'd check the operational status. Then I'd check how much snow they got at Breckenridge. Is that three?

Yes, I'm an AVID sports fan and last night served up a gem of a championship game between Villanova and North Carolina. I'm not going to give you the play by play, because you either saw it or can see the replays on the internet.

What struck me this morning is that it really sucks to lose. While nice to believe in the win-win kool aid scenario, the fact is that in most cases there is a winner .... and a loser.

Losing can manifest itself in many, many ways:

Missed that engineering deadline, only by a few days

Lost that must win sales deal

Quarterly revenue was $1 short

Thought you earned an A in the class, but got a B+

Getting passed over for that promotion

Tore your ACL on day 1 of your ski trip

... endless other losses ...

While watching the last few seconds of the game last night I noticed Daniel Ochefu (Villanova #23) take the mop from the ball boy kid and vigorously dry out the area that he had just left a full body length of sweat. I'd never seen that in a basketball game before and immediately thought that the upcoming inbound play with 4.7 seconds left was going to involve both Ochefu and that part of the court. It did. Check out the story on espn.com about the play.

It sure is fun to win though. Case in point was Charles Barkley's reaction to the winning shot. An ex NBA star running around with childlike wonder and joy. Fantastic. Love Barkley in those Capital One commercials with Samuel Jackson and Spike Lee. Funny.

I met Katherine Jeter a couple nights ago. Serendipity really. We were having breakfast and saw a pitch in the Summit Daily for a talk that night at the Summit County Community Center. The advert on page 16 immediately caught my attention because it was some older dude shredding it on his longboard. Kindred spirits. The speaker at the event was Katherine Jeter.

Katherine learned to ride a bike at 69. Two years later (2011) she cycled 3100 miles cross country. In 2013 her group of 9 women (all over the age of 60) summited Mount Kilimanjaro (19,000'). She winters up in Summit County to take advantage of all the snow activities (yes she still actively skis downhill). Inspiring stuff.

Of all the topics that I post about, I am convinced that activity and social connection are the most important at any stage of our life, but even more so in the last third. I'm reluctant to repeat blog post themes, but this one is just too important. If I learned anything by being on the leadership team at a technology company it was that repetition is good. You can't over communicate. So I'm going to repeat myself as I run across people that are special and have a message. Katherine Jeter is one of those people.

It was snowing pretty good the night of Katherine's talk. I wasn't expecting a big crowd. Imagine my surprise when we walked in to the Hossier room and it was PACKED! Also astonishing was that the 100+ people attending were all fit ... but that's Colorado for you. One person said they had skied their age in days this year (65). Another said they've skied 130. I feel good that I'll finish the season around 25, but clearly I'm a slacker. The social aspect of this group was impressive too. It seemed like most knew each other and often would ski together, bike together, hike together & meetup together.

I like my posts to be actionable, so here is the call to action. Katherine is featured in Tom Rath's new 66 minute documentary called, Fully Charged. We watched it on our Apple TV (sorry not on Netflix). It is a compliment to his book called, Are You Fully Charged?

Watch the movie, read the book! Get off your ass and start moving. Meet up with some friends and plan an epic adventure.

Arrived at our final destination. Technically Indio, CA but there must be at least a dozen little towns that make up the million people in the Coachella valley. Good thing we love deserts because that's about all we've seen the past few weeks. This area is like an oasis, beautiful!

First of all, the RV park. It is an old school park which made the back in pretty tight. Most people come for 4-5 months and once they park it, they forget it & their site seems to expand with semi permanent fixtures. Got the rig all tucked in in pretty short order and the unhitching was uneventful. Many activities to partake in, and we did find some time to go to the Dudes and Donuts meetup and the pre-Stagecoach party (including line dancing). Met some nice neighbors as is always the case. We've already booked a month at the Emerald Desert RV park for next year. Endless choices.

Took a two night side trip to LA to visit Brian. Stayed in Huntington Beach, but the highlight was the Kings-Ducks NHL game where we had some fantastic seats on the glass. Got to witness a full line fight that went on for several minutes.

The primary purpose of ending up here was to attend the BNP Paribas tennis tournament in Indian Wells. We got to see 4 days of it over the course of a week. This year we went to 1 day session and 3 night sessions. Last year it was so HOT, so the night sessions were a nice break ... cool enough for a blanket. I did write a separate blog post on Gratitude here. Brian came up for 3 nights, which was a little tight fit for the 3 of us in the Airstream, but we adjusted quickly.

A side trip to Joshua Tree, a celebrity home tour in Palm Springs, some great dining out, a trip to the emergency medical clinic for Lonna & much more made this an epic trip!

We've since gone back to Austin quickly with only two stops. Checked in on our little kitties we pick up at the end of April. Then headed up to our cabin in Breckenridge, CO for the last 3 weeks of ski season.

Ed brought his hobby project to our weekly lunch last Tuesday. He brought out a small Arduino based package with some extra sensors and some parts spit out of a 3D printer. He hooked it up to a terminal program on his Android phone with a USB cable. He then pulled out an ancient computer paper tape of what could've been the first program Ed had ever written a "few" years ago. He pulled the tape through his homebuilt paper tape reader and out popped the listing on his phone. Commercially viable, no. But it made my day and made me rethink a topic that I've had on my list ... Digital Decay.

You know what I'm talking about. Those really old photos stored away in those random shoeboxes will still be there for your kids to deal with. But what about all of the priceless files you have on your digital devices? Home movies, audio CDs, the last 20 years of digital photos, WordPerfect files, VisiCalc business models, Christmas letters, family audiotapes, ... the list goes on and on.

In today's world, what about all of your data stored on your behalf by cloud services. This LinkedIn post, Vanguard account, Kindle book highlights and notes, podcasts, Slack channel content, video recordings from your VC provider, company account information for Office365 or gmail, source code in cloud repositories, your twitter account history, phone backups, your brain in Evernote. The list goes on and on. What is the path forward if your purchased books don't show up on Amazon or Vanguard says you no longer own any assets. Uh oh.

I'm far more concerned with the permanence of cloud data than I am with personal files regardless of how old they are. For example, we are probably pretty safe with file formats like .jpg, .pdf, m4v, .xls, .doc, but what about that Clarisworks document I last touched 15 years ago. No migration path has been provided for many, many years. Enter LibreOffice and problem solved. Thank you!! What about that first 8 track tape I bought when I was 14? I guess I can throw that away now since I just listened to Bad Company on Apple Music (remastered in 2015). There are still all of the micro cassettes of my Dad and the videos of my son that I need to get off DVC tape. I've still got the micro cassette player, but not sure if I have DVC camera anymore or a computer that can ingest it easily. Need to move this up the list ... ASAP.

What about your cloud data? Do you have a migration plan for both your professional and personal data? Most vendors provide some sort of migration, but have you ever tried it?

Or maybe it's OK to let it all just decay away. Except for the Vanguard account.

First of all it was awesome. Especially when it's just the two of us traveling this time. It doesn't hurt that we have the most awesome of all travel trailers ... a brand new 2016 Airstream Classic! Even with one of the bigger Airstreams though, we'd be hard pressed to fit the number of people that we had in the Country Coach ten years ago. That is a good thing! We did have 3 people living in the Airstream for 3 nights and it did take a day of adjusting. I suppose I could get my head around 4 people in there for a short period of time. Especially if I spent almost all the time outside!

A typical day of travel had many similarities. The biggest difference was the hooking up and unhooking of the trailer to the truck. I've written about the joys of this in other posts but I now feel like I have that mostly sorted out. It can be trivial ... or it can be frustrating. The fact that it is not always the same makes it a little maddening, but it does add to the fun. The other systems are mostly simpler in the Airstream, but I'd say that setup in the motorhome was a little easier and faster. From the cockpit of the bus, I could deploy the leveling system, slides & generator. In the Airstream, I actually have to do a little manual work to level and stabilize. I'd say setup is still in the 15-30 minute range for both. Leaving camp is easier if I pre-attach the tow vehicle to the trailer the night before (if in a pull through site) and if I take care of the sewage hose. Then it's as simple as disconnecting cable, power (can even do that early if A/C unnecessary) and water. I do check the torque on the lug nuts and some greasing of some hitch parts. All minor.

A HUGE change for us in the Airstream is to slow down. An ideal stay is at least a week. I'm thinking that two weeks would be even better. We've even reserved a place in La Quinta, CA for next March. The whole month! The motorhome seemed easier to move around more frequently.

We haven't dry camped in the Airstream yet, but without solar, without a generator and with smaller holding tanks I think it would be tough for more than just a couple days. We do have plans to add some solar and maybe throwing a generator in the back of the truck. I'd like to do more remote camping, but for now it's all good with private campgrounds. The Texas hill country has many places to try out close to home.

Problems? Yes, but all minor. Certainly the biggest has been figuring out the hitch. We had a recall on the propane regulator & got it fixed in Tucson (we were actually experiencing problems with it). We had a wallowed out screw hold in an upper cabinet door that broke loose (had to remove the whole assembly & will fix it before we go out again). One access door (outside water shower) is super tight to open & I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to replace that lock when I break the key off! A couple of the windows need tweaking. I don't like the single stage charger, but swapping it out is low on the list. All in all, the motorhome had more sophisticated (and complicated) infrastructure like inverter, charger, power conditioning, generator but the Airstream has some more interesting components of its own (electric recliners, electric dinette table, better audio, twin beds that can lift the head, ... ). With the exception of the sheer size of "Bigfoot", the truck is fantastic!

The truck brings up one big advantage over the motorhome. One engine! And the engine gets awesome fuel milage. We'd get 7 mpg with the diesel pusher. We get twice that while towing. Sometimes we even see north of 15 mpg. When not towing, we can see over 20 mpg. More comfortable to drive too.

How about Austin, school, sports, pets, mail and other domestic chores. Well, no kids in school, no kids in sports, no pets (although that's about to change), living in a condo where they can pick up our mail & forward if necessary all make this time much easier for longer travel.

The trailer vs the motorhome is just different. Each has pluses and minuses. My recommendation from 10 years ago still stands. I still recommend you buy a RV and join us on the road. Great fun and always a new adventure around the corner.